Slideshow: Paris Auto Show Drives Electric

In a climate of economic austerity in which European car sales have declined over the past few years, the renewable and other emerging technologies on display during the recent 2012 Paris Motor Show offered a glimmer of hope.

The two-week event that ended on October 14 featured the latest in electric vehicle and hybrid technology. Automakers, like BMW, that have been slow to enter the hybrid and EV markets, showed off concept vehicles while others demonstrated the latest technologies for squeezing more miles and kilometers out of each gallon or liter of gas.

Click on the image below to see some of the cars on display at the show.

The BMW i8 Concept can run on electric power alone. The energy supplied by the application-designed battery (installed between the front and rear axles) to the electric motor at the front axle gives the BMW i8 Concept an all-electric driving range of about 20 miles. The battery can be fully recharged in two hours in a standard power socket.

Enough with this stupid argument! The problem with EVs is that we have a dirty electric power industry? You could say the same thing about vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens! A dirty electric power industry is a problem that needs fixing regardless of what you plug into the wall. And don't minimize the impact of gasoline - it's far from just what comes out of the tailpipe: unconventional petroleum production and refining to gasoline has a very high energy cost where it takes 5 times as much energy to get it to the pump than you get when you buy it and then convert it inefficiently into kinetic energy. Even if you use dirty electricity, unless you drive a very good hybrid, the environmental footprint of your driving an IC vehicle is higher than a comparable EV. The only thing missing is a full size EV pickup truck for commuting American style.

Fritz - forgot to respond to your second question. Tesla Motors is working on a supercharger network (which is actually free to Tesla owners) that will recharge their 300-mile ranged car to 80% of the battery within a 1/2 hour.

What about 0-60 in under 4 seconds says underpowered? The fastest IC car under $50K does 0-60 in 4.4 seconds while the fastest of all costs $2.4M. Cost for this level of performance just isn't an issue. Look for more split hybrid vehicles with independant electric direct drive at the wheels - torque at the wheels has a big advantage over torque into a transmission and independant control gives much better steerability. Also, brake fade is much lower. 0-60 doesn't tell all of the story though: vehicles with independent electric drive clean up on the serpentine. On a high performance car, it's relativley easy to add 100+ HP to each of the front wheels with a motor/brake module. While hauling around a battery isn't much joy, it does provide good distributed weight and low center of gravity for traction and stability in a way that's just not possible with a monster V8.

I think the sales of HEVs and Electrics is purely based on desire of the company to promote it properly. The Prius has gone from a single model, to a family of models. This is because they advertise the model properly, and you can walk into a Toyota Dealer and walk out with one the same day. Americans want it here and now, and if they walk into a dealership and are told they can have it in 3 or 6 months, you will lose the sale most of the time. It is a system adopted by the American Companies, that is DESIGNED to fail, and yet... people ARE buying and waiting for them. Imagine if they were available for purchase THAT DAY!

It looks like naperlou strikes out with the statement that most of these cars are small and underpowered... and to relate that to the sale of electric and hybrid cars makes little sense. The people that read the blurbs at the bottom clearly saw the incredible speed and power of some of the vehicles. Others, that push the boundries of distance use less power and get lighter. You think a Chevy volt or the BMW and many other HEVs and Electrics would disagree vehemently that these cars are underpowered. Electric car technology is the future of car design, and this show proves it. There will be many ways to get the electricity to run the cars, but the simplicity of electric will lead to less expensive cars that just don't have the kind of breakdowns, failures and maintenance costs of ICE based autos. For now, we will continue to stick ICE engines in them to increase distance issues, until we find better ways to store the power we need, even though many Americans work within the range of available electrics.

Rob, we are already there. I'd venture to guess that Europe will be leading the "charge" in this arena since their standard electricity is already 240 volt. There is no question about performance. Look at this month's Motor Trend and see how the Tesla S Faired with the Porsche, BMW M5, and Mercedes 100k cars.

Hard for me to believe anyone would mention "underpowered" as these cars are hitting 0-60 in under 4 seconds.

Whether you want to believe it or not, EVs are HERE to stay this time!

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